Posts Tagged ‘life’

I love October, squiders. You know that. It’s autumn! My birthday! The start of the holidays (which I have heard appropriately referred to as Halloween, Nanowrimo, and Christmas)! I love October. I can break out the hot chocolate and snuggle under blankets and watch ridiculous movies.

But this year, October does not love me. Everyone in the family has been sick, some in that vague, lingering way where you’re not really sick, just tired. I’m sick and tired. Nobody’s naps line up in a useful manner. I did nothing for my birthday, though I did get some nice cake.

Things keep breaking in weird, inexplicable and time-consuming manners. Normal routines and chores go horribly awry. I feel like I’m being more scatterbrained than usual. Oh, and my website is still down. Super annoyed about that. How am I supposed to market/network/etc. without my website?

What the heck, October? I adore you, and this is how you repay me? Fie on you, October. Fie on you!

I just want to get work done! My novel draft, and some short stories that just need a little bit of editing, and a new collection to come out in December. And my other novel that is ready to start querying. Can’t you just let me get somewhere with some of them? One of them? Any of them?

I’m sorely tempted to just sleep for the rest of the month.

(Ask me how my day has gone, squiders. I dare you.)

The only good thing really happening is that I’m finally getting some reading back in (the beginning of the month ate that too). I finished Jay Kristoff’s Stormdancer yesterday which, once I got past the truly awful beginning, was pretty good. And I started Sarah J. Maas’ Throne of Glass which I’m really enjoying. Apparently I’m on a YA fantasy kick at the moment, but it may be all that’s keeping me sane.

Life! It goes. Generally it goes at a fairly even keel and things have a routine to them. But every now and then, you find yourself anticipating a major life event and everything else kind of falls by the wayside.

And even if you do have time to get other things done (like, say, a blog) you might find that all you think about, all the time, is this new life event. You might open an internet window for a certain purpose, and fifteen minutes later discover you’ve added fifteen wedding venues to your list. A doodle in the margin along the side of your notes becomes a full out nursery design. And you spend your train ride to and from work reading books on the best places to eat while you’re in Shanghai.

On the brain, all the time.

Here’s the thing, though. If you focus on one thing for too long, do you know what happens? Your brain explodes, and then I have to get the Landsquid to clean it up. And he dislikes mopping brains.

But seriously. You focus on something so hard, and after awhile, things just go downhill. All your options start looking the same, and you bemoan the fact that you will never figure anything out, and all the cake starts to taste like cake. (Seriously. All wedding cake tastes the same after awhile. ALL OF IT.)

So, as hard as it is to drag your mind off your newest and most exciting event, do it. It’s good for your sanity. It’s good for your creative process. And it’s good so your friends don’t murder you because you won’t shut up about it.

This post was going to have a landsquid doodle to accompany it, but last week my husband set me up with a dual-monitor workstation (he calls it Starfleet Command; I knew I married him for a reason) and it turns out that the Wacom tablet is completely incompatible with a dual-screen set-up, so now I need him to fix it before anyone gets any more drawings, alas. (Or hoorah, depending on how terrible you think the drawings are.)